


Safer in Cages

by the_blue_fairie



Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon), Tangled (2010)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:15:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23992135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_blue_fairie/pseuds/the_blue_fairie
Summary: A tragic alternate ending to Freebird.
Relationships: Cassandra/Rapunzel (Disney: Tangled)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 50





	Safer in Cages

In the forest stands a house of sugar candy sheen. Its gingerbread walls are amply frosted, its mint-green garden cultivated and pristine. Candy canes line the path leading up to the gate, arranged in such a manner as to suggest informality, but nonetheless arranged. The weary traveler might suspect they are expected, but that is of little matter when the dust on their feet is lemon-drop dust. Or perhaps, it is not of little matter – but it matters little as Mother plies her tea. Father flits about, his icing-beard elaborate – then flits about again, in the air this time, his plumage impeccable.

Birdsong resounds.

There are birds there from every corner of the world. Some bear the fine white plumes of Galcrest, some the long proud beaks of Ingvarr. Many hail from Koto, some from Nesdernia, some from Arendelle. (Travelers wend their way there from all reaches of the earth.) All are distinctive – as Fabergé eggs, as the decorative birds of cuckoo clocks, with bejeweled eyes and feathers. As the clockmaker gives individuality to his works, slowly and gradually crafting, so time gives individuality to souls – and time’s marks find their way into faces, into frills, into beaks, into songs…

One bird sings the loudest, her ashen plumes like mourning garb.

She does not know why she sings. She is a creature, not a human being. She sings out of instinct, but something in that instinctiveness drives her into hoarseness; something fuels that instinct that forms itself in flashes that she cannot give a name…

Images of wings beating against the golden bars of the cage.

Images of a golden bird by her side.

That same golden bird breaking free of her bonds and attacking the pavlova of shapes.

A scream rising in her soul (she does not know what a scream is, but instinct keeps the feel of it alive in her) and strangling into a screech.

As that ice cream tower of a man (what is a man?), that stack of shapes she strains to keep alive in hate but cannot (only the scream is kept alive, only its vestiges as her humanity dies away) – as he catches the little golden bird in his nimble hands and wrings her neck.

Little broken body falling from his fingers.

Little broken body kicked aside.

The last thing the grey bird sees before her eyes glass over, before instinct subsumes the human realm of thought.

Her last thought not of vengeance, but despair.

Broken like the limp golden thing that will never sing anymore.

And so, the grey bird sings the loudest of the menagerie.

She, who would not sing so before.

She does not sing to keep the memory of the golden bird alive. To do that, she would need the consciousness she once had. But instinct drives her on, carrying the song in her with the scream.

The golden song the world will never hear again.


End file.
